‘What We Do in the Shadows’ has plenty planned for Season Four

In the fourth season of the FX comedy, Nadja decides to open a nightclub in order to help pay for repairs on the crumbling house she shares with Laszlo, Nandor, Colin Robinson and Guillermo.

“It’s better than anything you could ever imagine,” says Natasia Demetriou, who plays Nadja. “As crazy as you want to go in a nightclub, you can go there at Nadja’s Nightclub.”

Once it gets rolling, the nightclub will attract celebrities, both vampire and non-vampire. At one point, the price of drinks becomes a discussion. Nadja concludes, “The drinks have to be very expensive because that attracts the wealthy people and the wealthy people are like veal. They get massaged and eat rich food and their blood is just delicious.”

Also in the new season, Colin Robinson comes back as a child. He celebrated his 100th birthday by dying, but then a baby Colin emerged out of his chest and now scampers around the house like a toddler.

For actor Mark Proksch, who plays Colin, it’s an interesting transformation. “I do stuff that I’ve been wanting Colin to do since Season 1,” he says during a Zoom conference.

Adds Executive Producer Paul Simms: “Colin is a very, very active child with way too much energy. He is something of a drain on the energy of the household, but not in the way that the adult Colin was, where he’ll bore you to death.”

To accomplish the feat, visual effects experts “utilized every trick in the book,” Proksch says. “Anytime you say, ‘We’re going to turn one of the main characters into a baby,’ it could go sideways very quickly. But they really did a great job and the writing works so well that I think it comes off pretty seamlessly.”

While it’s unlikely baby Colin will return to adult Colin in one season, it’s a sure thing that big names in the vampire world will check out the new club.

“Anyone who has ever played a vampire anywhere will eventually appear on this show if their schedule permits it,” Simms says. “There’s an episode where Fred Armisen plays a manager of a big vampire act who cancels their performance at the nightclub at the last moment. And Nadja and The Guide (played by Kristen Schaal) have to do some wheeling and dealing to persuade him to be there.”

Nandor, who has been making life difficult for Guillermo for three years, has appointed him his best man. Now the “familiar” (as Guillermo was once known) has to help him find a bride. Easing the search: a genie who comes with a lamp full of wishes.

“We wanted to subvert every expectation and have him be just like a genie who is more like a businessman,” Simms says. “Someone who goes, ‘Yeah, the three-wish rule, that’s all made up, you know. That’s not real.’”

For Guillermo, played by Harvey Guillen, the fourth season is a real balancing act. In addition to handling Nandor’s business, he has to oversee the big remodeling project.

Because Guillermo was away for some time (Lazlo put him in a crate filled with Oreos and Pedialyte and let it set sail across the Atlantic), “he realizes a lot of things about himself and a lot of things that he’s been missing in life,” Guillen says.

Family members show up and give him a reason to reconnect.

A lot to unpack? It’s only the beginning, says Demetriou. “I want the Nadja Nightclub to be opened up in every city in the world because it’s everything you could ever want. Studio 54 is sort of like a sports day on a field with cups of tea.”

“What We Do in the Shadows” premieres July 12 on FX and streams the following day on Hulu.